Looks like I’m a little late to the party

Now the party begins!

Oh, my. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I’m watching it now and it’s so bad. His arguments are on par with the average r/classicalmusic user decrying “modernism” and the “avant-garde.”

I’m having a hard time finding his post in /r/classicalmusic about it where he and I got into it a bit. It was frustrating, of course.

But most importantly, he holds classical music in such contempt while at the same time trying to appear that not only is he knowledgeable about classical music but that he likes it and is sympathetic toward it. None of that is true. As you note, many of his off-hand comments betray his ignorance as well.

committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz.

There was a weird phenomenon a number of years ago where it seemed like computer science types were positioning themselves as the top experts in every single field of study because they could dash off a Python script in an afternoon to solve the most difficult problems in all these fields. It doesn’t seem as bad anymore but back in the day, whew!, it was a sight to behold! Anyway, Neely seems to have a bit of that about him, classical music can be best explained in terms of jazz and where it can’t, it’s not worth thinking about anyway.

seems not to have realized that electronic music’s biggest pioneers were classical composers, that classical composers have been writing scores for electronic music (both fixed and live electronics) for decades

Yeah, it’s just some basic research or maybe even paying attention in class. Oops, he went to Berklee so who knows what he “learned” there!

I have to admit, I didn’t expect the video to be that bad.

Adam is always full of surprises!

Good take. My knowledge of music theory barely runs beyond what I am interested in as a composer (have forgotten so much, of course) so I don’t really have a good way to judge his other theory videos.

The tritone video was one that I was thinking of that I liked and then also his anti-432 video. After that, I am realizing that I don’t really watch many of his videos. Very few, actually, so who knows what gems I’m missing out on.

He basically makes undergraduate research essays with a budget. And people pay him for it and take it for gospel.

That’s definitely a problem. I think he does try to be accurate but when he messes up he doesn’t handle it well.

Thanks for posting that video. First, I do actually like a lot of Neely’s videos. Many of them are very interesting and well-researched and entertaining. I even enjoy his method of presentation and his tone (which I know many people dislike).

That said, my specific gripe has always been that he handles classical music badly. He thinks he’s an expert on it but he really isn’t.

The first part of this video dealt with that and Neely’s inability to really admit how wrong he was.

The second part with Adam Ragusea was something I was unfamiliar with but holy shit, Neely really dropped the ball on that by not doing the five seconds of research required to verify Ragusea’s qualifications for being used in the video. I know Neely can’t be held 100% responsible for the living hell Ragusea suffered through because of that video but Neely most certainly contributed to making things worse for Ragusea and really hasn’t done anything to fix that situation. I’m sure Neely reads tons of shit about himself online and probably feels Ragusea should have a thicker skin, but just being a decent human being means we really should temper what we say and how we say it when criticizing other people. I’m sure the professor from the first part of the video went through some similar hell because of how badly Neely misrepresented him.

The last part of the video is trickier and I think the author of the video tried to make that clear. I think that the other music theory person would have the right to feel at least a little bothered by how amazingly similar Neely’s analogy was. It’s entirely possible that Neely forgot about the other person’s video and thought this was something he came up with or had heard about in music schools decades ago. But when confronted with the facts, he could have handled that better. Interestingly, in the comments, Youtuber David Bennett defended Neely on this point. Have no idea if that means anything but just as some professional courtesy it’s entirely ok to issue a mea culpa and take some lumps. In no way would that have hurt Neely’s career.

Finally, I wish the author had done a segment on Neely’s video about the cult of sheet music (or some such similar title). Once again Neely completely misrepresented how classical music works this time relative to sheet music. In fact, he and I got into a bit of a heated argument on the topic on Reddit. His knowledge of classical music is lacking but his confidence isn’t.

There have been a few other times where Neely has stated an opinion on certain classical composers or works that I’ve found suspect but aren’t worth worrying about. But they do help confirm his lack of expertise when it comes to classical music.